Monday 24th June

A 2nd lovely calm and quiet night at anchor. Not a ripple on the water in the morning. We rowed ashore for a walk and were soon found by Nando and met his red mouthed beetel nut chewing grandmother, jolly aunt Mary and her pretty daughter who look after the concrete framed warehouse. This little island seems to have been chosen for special development with a new high school on the hill which we asked Nando to show us.  On an elevated site overlooking the bay an impressive array of buildings accomodate 300 pupils -most boarders comming in from other islands. Perhaps the logging money is doing some good.

The school was still quiet after the weekend as the pupils return during the day on monday. Nando is a pupil and his older brother is a doctor in Honiara and older sister a teacher at the school.  His younger brother came to visit the boat last night in his canoe.

Mary gave us a pumpkin and some french beans from her garden- a great treat for supper, and Nando offered to fetch us some fresh coconuts. He pulled up a banana sapling and converted it to rope by stripping it under a stick. Then rolled that into a loop  and tied it with grass. Placing his feet in the loop so that they were held against the trunk he jumped up the tree in about  10 leaps and around a dozen coconuts rained down as he stamped them off the top. 

We took 8 which has about as much as the dinghy could manage and I invited Nando to see the boat and give him a notebook and pens, the last of my gift supplies. We dished out biscuits and cake to Nando and his brother who had returned in his canoe and a couple of lads in another canoe and Nando had some tea and showed me how to open a coconut with about three or four accurate swipes of my machete.  Nando was the strong silent type- but did say he liked science best and would like to be  a doctor like his brother. That seems to be the career of choice for ambitious young men as a couple of others had expressed the same thought. 

After rowing Nado back to the beach we set off for Honiara at midday, picking up a little breeze to tempt us to switch off the engine for most of the day.

View from the school	The Library
They have magnificent rain  trees here rather than banyans. This one giving shade for spectators of the sports field.	A carved sofa on the beach